This Trib editorial is worth featuring. So are the comments. lee



The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2008

It has been widely thought that Hillsborough County School Superintendent MaryEllen Elia's contract gives her a hefty bonus for student achievement. She earned a $37,620 bonus this year alone, but look close and you will see it is only partly grounded in student gains.

Elia earned $13,600 for each school that achieved Annual Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. She got another $10,100 - at $100 a pop - for the 101 Hillsborough Schools that rated an "A" on the FCAT.

That's fair enough.

But she also was given nearly $8,000 for getting more students, particularly black students, to participate in advanced placement classes and to take AP exams - though the number of students who actually did well enough on the test to earn college credit did not improve.

Participation shouldn't be confused with achievement.

The Florida Department of Education also likes to pretend high schools are better than they are because more kids are signing up for advanced courses. One Texas study showed that students who merely participated in AP courses had a better chance of graduation from college than those who did not take AP classes. But the same study showed the best chance of college success was among students who actually passed AP tests.

In Hillsborough, just 45 percent of the more than 15,000 students who take AP courses score well enough on the exam to be given credit. And among minority students, the success rate was even lower.

On other significant measures, Elia received no bonus. There was no bonus for improvements in reading scores for black and Hispanic students in third, eighth and 10th grades. And although she did get a reward for higher math scores among minority students, at less than $1,800 it was just a smidgen of her overall bonus.

The two best measures of education success are nowhere to be found in Elia's contract: the high school graduation rate - not counting GEDs, which the state shamefully allows - and the number of Hillsborough high school graduates who need remediation when they attend a community college or university.

If the school board measured those things, it wouldn't be pretty.

More than 80 percent of those going into Hillsborough Community College need remediation in math, reading and writing because they are not prepared to do college-level work. At the state universities, 55 percent of new students needed remediation.

Elia can't be blamed for negotiating a good deal for herself. She is earning more than $290,518 this year.

It is the school board that is responsible for the largesse. The contract may say Elia is being judged on performance, but parents and the public should not be fooled.

If the Hillsborough School Board truly wanted to reward the superintendent for improving schools, members would change the measures to ones which show Hillsborough students are learning what they need to succeed in life.
Reader Comments

Posted by ( ToeCutter ) on January 18, 2008 at 11:29 a.m. ( Suggest removal )

She needs a tax break.

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Posted by ( Major7th ) on January 18, 2008 at 2:39 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

and yet the budget for our music programs is 90% less than it was 30 years ago. Way to go bean counter, milk the morons that run this school system for all their worth. You obviously don't any teaching experience to make 10 times what our teachers make.

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Posted by ( twinkobie ) on January 18, 2008 at 8:23 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

The Elia compensation editorial is right.

Ms. Elia is greedy and bilks all the money she can from taxpayers, but the editors are correct that the board is responsible.

April Griffin and Susan Valdes gave her a low evaluation but still rubberstamped her lavish contract. So they did nothing to curb Elia’s greed.

The scheme in which Elia gets "performance" bonus began with Lennard's crafty manipulation of the board.

When Elia came along, the board probably with the complicit attorney Gonzalez's urging just rolled the bonus scheme over into Elia's contract. The teachers did the work that raises students’ scores; it is they who deserve any bonuses for the achievement.

I believe Gonzalez's willingness to go along with anything that the superintendent pushes is to keep on her good side to keep his job. He knows Elia, not the board, is in charge. His firm got the job fourteen years ago from Lennard without allowing any of the other firms in town to apply. Gonzalez knew this was wrong because he is a labor lawyer; but he grabbed the unfair deal anyway.

Presently, Elia has rammed a grade-inflation scam down teachers’ throats without consulting them. As a professor at HCC for 28 years, I predict that this scheme will up the already high number of students from county schools who enter college without being able to write a literate paragraph. Instead of teaching Yeats and Shakespeare, I had to teach these freshman students grammar and punctuation. The dumbing down that the grade-inflation scheme that Elia has forced on the teachers is bound to make this matter worse.

Elia has no sympathy for literacy. She struggles with punctuation herself and writes with the felicity of a 7th grader.

If there were one brave member of the school board who would lead instead of sitting on his or her hands and quaking at the thought of opposing the group tyranny of obeying Elia and giving her everything she wants, that would make all the difference. But there is not one such person on the board now. They are uniformly gutless.

The taxpayers are to blame for that situation of a weak, complicit board. But so are the newspapers that are remiss in not reporting it more clearly and often to the public.

If, as the public asserts, education is the most important concern of people, then the school board abetted by the mute newspapers are not doing their jobs.

lee drury de cesare
tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com

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Posted by ( Major7th ) on January 19, 2008 at 1:03 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Very well said; Twinkobie

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Posted by ( Montolino ) on January 22, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. ( Suggest removal )

Elia should donate her bonus back to the schools. Taking that bonus is comparable to stealing from children. That is taxpayer money meant for schools, not Elia's pocket book. Shame on her! The only ethical thing for her to do is to donate it back to the school district and earmark it for student incentives.

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